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Hi Everyone,

I know I'm probably dreaming, but it's time to replace my aging Panasonic Toughbook (as far as I know the last laptop made with trackball), and I'm looking to replace it with something with a trackball.

I do a lot of graphics work, usually for touchscreen, in strange places like pump vaults, and the nipple and touchpad are both worthless for this. The trackball is nearly worthless, but still useable. A lot of the time I have the laptop sitting on a drum or bucket, so a built in trackball would be preferable.

So, my question to the Knowledge Gods is, is there any laptop still being produced with a trackball or can be converted to one?

Submitted in obsequiousness,

Larry

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It's also in the right place, centered in the middle of the case, not off to the left like on some notebooks - centering the pad in relation to the keyboard or space bar by putting it off to the left just makes no sense unless your right arm is visibly longer than your left).

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We've been through this one before here. For people who actually touch-type on their keyboards, the touch-pad needs to be correctly centered between the hands whilst they are positioned on the "home row" --> index fingers on F and J.

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Otherwise, the part of one hand below the thumb (what's that called, anyway?) will tend to rest on the touch-pad while typing, producing ghost touches/moves.

Funny, but I don't have that problem with the PowerBook. Maybe I don't type as well as others out there though - or as properly. But I haven't heard that complaint from others either - a number of acquaintances are your traditional touch-typists. I can certainly reproduce the phenomenon you describe on this machine, but I have to really smack my hand well into the middle of the pad and make sure it makes contact. It doesn't normally do that with my fingers at the home positions unless I were to bend my wrists into carpel tunnel inducing angles that don't feel natural even for a split second.

My position is that it's a matter of design. That is to say, a pad implementation and position on a notebook that has been poorly designed may very well have the problems you mentioned. But one implemented properly will not (PowerBooks, iBooks, MacBooks and MacBook Pros for instance). I can only imagine what hell it is to use the circular trackpad on a Panasonic Toughbook.

I can't say for sure what aspects of the design remove the effects of the problem you mention, but if you ever have the chance, do note the overall position of the pad on one of the machines I mentioned. It's certainly centered width-wise, but its dimensions and positioning top-to-bottom likely have something to do with it as well. I also find the buttons on most notebooks, not to mention the keys, abysmal. Not so on these.

The trackpad prefs in Mac OS also have an option to "Ignore accidental trackpad input" - though I can't give any concrete examples of how the system works without it enabled (I've always left it on).

Whether I was running Windows or Linux, I'd still use a Mac notebook. There hasn't been a single time in the past five years where I've used anyone else's notebook, regardless of brand, where I haven't felt like throwing it out a window.

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Otherwise, the part of one hand below the thumb (what's that called, anyway?) will tend to rest on the touch-pad while typing, producing ghost touches/moves.

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Nope. Apple makes their own touchpads for the iPods and laptops. They started doing this in February of 2005, and on the linux side, the touchpad ends up using a module called "appletouch" integrated at 2.6.14.

Not sure why they decided to make their own, but IIRC, thats when they also switched over to multitouch for scrolling on the touchpad, though this was possible on some prior models with a driver hack.

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on the linux side, the touchpad ends up using a module called "appletouch" integrated at 2.6.14.